Church Family Helps Out With Quadruplets

Parents Say `Thanks' On Birthday

June 06, 1994|By Sonya C. Vann, Tribune Staff Writer.

In the four years she and her husband underwent fertility treatments in hopes of having a child, Toni-Ann Meola-McCarty said a silent prayer each time she passed Christ the King Church in Lombard en route to the clinic.

And in the year since quadruplets Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were born, nearly two dozen of the church's parishioners have been there for Meola-McCarty, volunteering for the seemingly endless cycle of bathings, feedings and diaper changings the boys require.

Complications kept the premature infants and their mother hospitalized at Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood for more than a month beyond the June 3, 1993, delivery. During her stay, Meola-McCarty met hospital volunteer Vince Olson, who promised that he and his fellow parishioners would help out once she and her babies returned home.

At their birthday party Sunday in the Rusty Pelican restaurant in Lombard, the four brothers-wearing colorful identical shorts sets-were passed among the familiar arms of their caretakers, who also were honored.

"It's fun. We can go for four hours and put up with anything," said Peggy Ishikawa, as she held blond, blue-eyed Matthew. "They're good babies."

Her daughter, Sumi Ishikawa, 15, agreed that sitting for the boys was fun, except when she was alone with them. "I did it once alone for about two hours. It was tiring."

"They've helped with diaper changing, cuddling, even just emotionally. This is why my babies are so happy and healthy-they have so much stimulation from these wonderful Christian people who're around them so much," said Meola-McCarty, 31.

Her husband, Lee McCarty, 43, said lingering heart problems caused by the difficult pregnancy caused his wife to tire easily and have made the church members' presence even more vital.

Meola-McCarty said she was not a regular churchgoer until the boys' Nov. 17 baptisms at Christ the King, when she and her husband joined the church.

The boys' New Testament names came to her in what she believes was a divine revelation.

"I knew that I was pregnant, but I never thought there would be more than one," she said. "It was about two weeks later that I had the dream. To me it was God. A man's voice told me that I would have four boys and that I should name them Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and that I should raise them in the Christian light."

When doctors suggested that the multiple births be reduced in utero to a more viable two fetuses, the Lombard couple refused. "We tried for four years to have the children and we weren't going to give up any of them," Meola-McCarty explained.

Born nine weeks premature at 31 weeks, the boys weighed between 2.6 and 3.4 pounds but were otherwise healthy and without the lung problems common to infants born so early.

As of their first birthdays Friday, the boys were "completely caught up" in size, their mother reported, weighing between 20 and 24 pounds and saying "Mama" and "Dada."

Christ the King parishioner Pat Beifuss recalls that when the babies were around 3 months old, the volunteers could barely keep up with which child needed to be changed or fed-they averaged a total of about 50 diaper changes each day.

Now the volunteers, who work four-hour shifts at the McCartys' home, mostly have to keep the active toddlers out of trouble, according to church member Virginia Torney. "I have a lot of fun. It's one of the better volunteer things you can do."

"People always come up to me and say `God bless you,' and I say he already has," Meola-McCarty said. "It's four times the work, but it's four times the joy."

"The people who are sarcastic say, `I'm so glad it's you and not me' and I say `I'm glad it's me and not you, because I love this.' I really feel I've been blessed."

With the loss of Meola-McCarty's income and the sudden increase in family size, the couple has relied heavily on the kindest of strangers.

In addition to the volunteer baby-sitting-which permitted the couple to take a needed holiday recently to Phoenix-the Wal Mart in Villa Park donated some birthday presents, people have sent boxes of clothes, and baby food companies sent coupons when the babies were born.

"Between formula and diapers alone, it's been like a mortgage payment every month. We had to buy a van because the car we had . . . could only fit three baby seats in back," Meola-McCarty said. Their three-bedroom split-level home "is bursting at the seams," said Lee McCarty, who owns Chimney Crickets Ltd., a tuck pointing company in Lombard.

"It's a lot better now that they're older. When they were so small, they couldn't do anything on their own," he said. "The bigger they get, the better it is."